Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents gather in the former British colony
for a mass candlelight vigil to commemorate the victims of 1989's Tiananmen
Square massacre.

Hong Kong's Victoria Park became a sea of flickering lights as candles were held aloft to remember those killed when protests in central Beijing were brutally suppressed by the Chinese military on June 4, 1989.

The large crowd called on China's government to reverse its verdict on the protests, which Communist Party leaders have condemned as a counterrevolutionary riot.

"We can show to the Chinese leaders that even after 24 year after the massacre, in Hong Kong we will not forget what they have done. We will continue to demand for justice. We demand for changes in China," said Lee Cheuk-yan, a pro-democracy legislator and organiser of the vigil.

Event organisers claimed 150,000 had attended the event, which is held annually, while local police put the number at 54,000.

Commemorations of the June 4 1989 crackdown are suppressed elsewhere in China. On the country's social media, searches for words including "commemorate" and "6_4" were banned, and the candle emoticon was removed.

However, in Hong Kong, the event has taken on a life of its own, with residents of the semi-autonomous Chinese region expressing unhappiness that their administrators are still hand-picked by Beijing, despite promises of more democracy.

China's government has pledged to let Hong Kong elect its own leader by 2017 and elect all legislators in 2020, but plans are yet to be announced.